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Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer and longtime Donald Trump adviser, is believed to be the sixth co-conspirator included in the latest criminal indictment against the former president.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump with four offenses in relation to the 2020 election and January 6 federal probe—conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy against rights of citizens; obstructing an official proceeding; and conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding. The former president denies all these and any wrongdoing.
As well as laying out the allegations against Trump, the 45-page indictment included six unnamed co-conspirators who were alleged to have aided the Republican in his "criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power."
Five of the co-conspirators were identifiable due to the clues in the indictment, including publicly available information, quotes, and dates of meetings. These include "co-conspirator 1," who is Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani; and "co-conspirator 2," who is thought to be fellow Trump attorney John Eastman. He is alleged to have been the orchestrator of the plot to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
The other three co-conspirators are believed to be conspiracy theorist lawyer Sidney Powell; former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark; and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro.
However, the identity of "co-conspirator 6"—described in the indictment as a "political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding"—was not so easy to pin down.
The sixth alleged co-conspirator is now believed to be Epshteyn, a longtime aide to Trump. The 40-year-old Russian-American is said to have been a key figure in the plot to install fake electors in several key states to falsely declare Trump had beaten Joe Biden in 2020.
A December 2020 email sent from Epshteyn to Giuliani matches a description of one that is detailed in Trump's indictment. Newsweek has contacted Epshteyn for comment via email.
The email sent from Epshteyn to Giuliani and Giuliani's son, Andrew, contained the subject line, "Attorneys for Electors Memo," reported The New York Times.
"Dear Mayor, as discussed, below are the attorneys I would recommend for the memo on choosing electors," the email adds before going on to name lawyers in several states.
In the indictment, there is a section that details how Giuliani had "spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 regarding attorneys who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states, and he received from Co-Conspirator 6 an email identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin."
The seven states are the same as those listed in the email that Epshteyn had sent to Giuliani, although there is still a chance that another person from Trump's orbit sent Giuliani a similar email around the same time.
Former Obama-appointed Justice Department official Eric Columbus had also speculated that "Co-Conspirator 6" would be Epshteyn. He tweeted that, while the Russian-American is a lawyer, he "at that point was not acting as one, hence his description in the indictment as a political consultant."
Who Is Boris Epshteyn?
While Trump is known to go through advisers and lawyers at a quick rate, Epshteyn has remained by the former president's side for years.
Epshteyn, who was born in Moscow before moving to the U.S., met Trump through his son, Eric Trump, whom he was friends with at Georgetown University, reported Politico.
Epshteyn joined Trump's 2016 campaign as a communications aide and would often appear on television to defend the former president. Epshteyn would later work as communications director for Trump's inaugural committee before later joining the 2020 campaign as an adviser for coalitions.
Epshteyn has long been considered among the leading figures of Trump's inner circle who helped push the false election-fraud cries about the 2020 election.
In 2022, Epshteyn, along with Giuliani, Powell and Trump's assistant Jenna Ellis, was subpoenaed to give evidence to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack.
Epshteyn was also subpoenaed as part of the federal investigation into the events leading up to the January 6 attack, and had his phone seized by the FBI as part of the inquiry.
A sign of how much Trump trusts Epshteyn can be seen at how closely linked he is to the other criminal investigations involving the former president, and apparently provides counsel and legal advice for him.
In April, when Trump arrived in New York for his historic arraignment over falsifying business records charges, Epshteyn sat beside the former president in the courtroom as he pleaded not guilty to 34 charges.
Trump's former lawyer Tim Parlatore also said he had left the former president's legal team because of differences he had with Epshteyn regarding the classified documents case.
"The real reason is because there are certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be," Parlatore told CNN in May.
"There is one individual who works for him, Boris Epshteyn, who had really done everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president."
Parlatore added that Epshteyn had dissuaded the former president's legal team from organizing a search of Trump's property in Bedminster, New Jersey, for classified documents after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
"There was a lot of pushback from him where he didn't want us doing the search. And we had to eventually overcome him," Parlatore said. A Trump spokesperson called the claims at the time "unfounded and categorically false."
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more